


nuclear winter

by honey_wheeler



Series: the end of the world [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Lapdance, M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:46:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik and Charles take a night out among adults. Erik buys Charles a lapdance and watches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nuclear winter

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the scene with Charles and Erik playing chess at the mansion.

It's been one of the longest days Erik can remember. An hour ago seems like yesterday, yesterday seems like days ago. There's a feeling of irrevocable motion, like a tug on a stray tail of yarn that makes everything unravel. It's unsettling. Erik feels a need to stop things somehow, to switch off the forces bearing them inexorably into tomorrow. It's an unfamiliar urge. Normally Erik is the one hurrying tomorrow along.

Charles is the first to leave when it becomes obvious that they won't be finishing their game. He sits back in his chair for a moment, surveying the board over steepled fingers, then abruptly pushes to his feet, his shins barking the table and setting Erik's king to wobbling. "I should make sure there's enough food for tomorrow morning," he says absently. Erik knows it's an excuse. Of all the things tomorrow might bring for them to worry about, a lack of a balanced meal isn't one of them. He wishes he could tell Charles what he wants to hear. He wishes Charles could understand, could come around to Erik's point of view. It's inconceivable that someone who matches him so well in so many ways could be so opposed in another. Somehow it feels like a cruel trick of the universe. Erik has spent years alone and without attachment; now an invisible wedge is being driven between him and the first person he's trusted implicitly.

He gives Charles time to be alone before he joins him in the kitchen, determined to leave the day's events aside for an hour. Charles is hunting futilely for whatever food might have withstood Alex, Sean, and Hank's earlier assault.

"Anything left?" Erik asks lightly, leaning against the door frame with forced casualness.

"Barely. They're like a plague of locusts." Charles closes the pantry door with a sigh and pulls open an adjacent cupboard. He seems equally determined to pretend nothing has changed, that they aren't barreling headlong into an uncertain future. "Bare as Old Mother Hubbard's."

"How can they possibly go through so much food?" Erik wonders. Charles shrugs.

"They're teenagers," he says. "That's what they do." It's with a start that Erik realizes how alien his own experience was compared to that of these children, that they've never known true hunger or thought to ration food instead of thoughtlessly consuming it with little concern for when and where the next meal might come. It makes them soft, he thinks.

"Soft in some ways, yes," Charles says without looking away from the picked-over shelves, "but not in others."

"You know I hate it when you do that," Erik tells him.

"Then learn not to think so loud," Charles says, and closes yet another barren cupboard.

"Is that possible?"

"Certainly," Charles says. He opens the icebox behind him and extracts the one thing left in it, a carton of chocolate ice cream. He opens it and makes a face. "Half-full. Bastards. Whoever that telepath was on the submarine did it to me, remember? You can close off your mind to others. Anyone can, not just telepaths." He opens a drawer and takes out two spoons, tossing one to Erik. Erik could have gotten it himself, even from across the room, but there's no need to show off. Not to Charles.

"How?"

"It's a muscle, like any other," he says, "albeit a mental one. You exercise it, guard your mind. Feel for the thoughts aimed at you like you felt for the metal of the submarine and push them away."

Erik takes a spoonful of ice cream thoughtfully. Interesting.

"Mind you, if someone like me wanted to get in there, it would take a great deal of strength and practice to keep him out. Though I don't like to push past resistance if I don't have to." Erik raises an eyebrow in question, and Charles shrugs, seeming almost embarrassed. "I prefer to respect the sanctity of people's minds if I can."

"How stupidly noble," Erik says. Charles looks a little bothered, like he wants to defend himself or argue the point, but he just takes another spoonful of ice cream.

"We all draw our own lines in the sand, I suppose," he says at last, something Erik can't argue.

Raven appears in the doorway swaddled in a bathrobe, the white terrycloth brilliant against the peach of her skin. Her false skin. Erik understands why she hides her true form most of the time, but it still makes his heart heavy. There is so much stacked against them. She moves to Charles's side and rests her head on his shoulder. Her face is drawn and sad, like she just lost an argument.

"Ice cream? You'll ruin your dinner," she says in a way that suggests it's something they've both heard often.

"I've already had dinner," Charles points out. He grins when she leans forward with her mouth open and pokes a spoonful of ice cream through her lips. "You should go to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be..." he pauses, gropes for the right words before giving up and swirling his spoon in the air as some sort of stand-in gesture. She straightens and steps away from him, arms crossed defensively.

"Yes, because the biggest issue tomorrow is going to be whether we've gotten enough sleep."

"Raven-"

"Do you really think anything we do is going to matter?" she demands.

"Yes," Charles says firmly, "I do."

"Well I don't," she shoots back. "If it isn't tomorrow, it'll be some other day. Humanity is always going to find ways to destroy each other. Or us." Charles heaves a tired sigh. He glances over at Erik with some exasperation, but Erik only raises his eyebrows. Raven meets his eyes and something passes between them, a certain sort of kinship. Charles may know what Raven thinks, but Erik knows what she feels. Erik knows what it's like to feel betrayed by the world that made you, something that Charles has been privileged enough to escape.

"Will you even be willing to fight?" she challenges Charles. "Will you be able to kill if you need to?" It's something Erik has to admit he's wondered himself. Charles clenches his jaw, his fisted hands thrust into his pockets so the fabric tents over his knuckles.

"I will do what I have to do, Raven."

"You won't even kill spiders," Erik points out, not giving any quarter even when Charles rounds on him with a scowl. "You trap them under a glass and set them free outside."

"That's our Charles!" Raven says, her tone laced with a bitter sort of mockery. "He'll see the good in everything right up until it kills all of us." She pushes past him as she storms from the kitchen. Charles steadies himself against the counter, his hands curling on its edge until his knuckles turn white. Suddenly the day just seems too heavy, too real. Erik wants to escape. He wants to be somewhere else for a while, be some _one_ else.

"Let's get out of here," he says. Charles looks up in surprise.

"Now? Tomorrow is-"

"Tomorrow the world might end. No better time." Charles looks at him for a long moment, his gaze measured, considering.

"Where did you have in mind?" he asks finally.

"I don't know," Erik says. "Just somewhere. Somewhere with adults."

*****

There's a certain irony in it. Erik wanted adult company, and the only place they've found open is a gentleman's club, although it's disreputable-looking enough that Erik doubts most gentlemen would ever enter the premises. As soon as they walk through the door, Charles laughs.

"Never been to one of these places in my life, only to end up in two in a matter of weeks," he says ruefully.

"I'm clearly a terrible influence," Erik says. He can't pretend he's as much of a stranger to such places. Often, they were the only human contact he allowed himself. He's spent so much of his life consumed with such single-minded determination, there was no room for anything else. It's a new experience, this camaraderie, this sense of belonging. This sense of having an equal, a partner. He barely recognizes himself now, how easily he laughs, how he delights in undermining Charles's every effort to be responsible and professorial. How he thrills at exploring his powers not through fear, but with a sense of discovery. If pressed, he would claim that who he's been during these heady days with Charles is someone else entirely, but he suspects he's truly himself for maybe the first time. It's a frightening sensation. He hasn't had anything to lose in a very long time.

Charles claps him on the shoulder, already looking much less tense and strained than he did before. The day has taken a toll on him as well. "First round's on you, my friend," he says, a mischievous smile on his face, one that Erik can't help matching.

"Presumptuous," he says with a shake of his head. "And you with your privileged upbringing."

"I provided the house," Charles reminds him. "Now I'm just giving you the chance to demonstrate your own largesse." He unbuttons his coat and sits on a semi-circular banquette, arms spread along the back. He takes up more than his fair share of space, confident of his place in the world. Their knees bump when Erik settles next to him.

The first drink takes the edge off, and Erik nurses the second, watching Charles interact with those around him. He seems more interested in talking with Erik than in watching the dancers. He does not stop at Erik's two drinks, gesturing the waitress over several times. He flirts with her in his respectful, inept way. It's something that's most likely disastrous with well-heeled society girls, but the waitress is clearly charmed. Erik imagines she sees the worst of humanity more often than she sees the best.

"Won't you be hung-over?" Erik asks when Charles takes a fifth drink. Charles swallows a third of it in one gulp and shakes his head, gritting his teeth at the burn of the alcohol.

"Never get hung-over," he says.

"And I suppose you can sober up on command as well."

"To a degree," Charles allows.

"Impressive," Erik says, and he means it, but he can't resist a jab. "Finally your mutation has one useful application." Charles laughs out loud at that, his face more boyish than ever. This Charles is a world away from the serious young man Erik looked at over a chess board earlier. This is the Charles that might have always been if the world hadn't seen fit to change.

"My brain is a frightening and fantastic place, Erik," Charles tells him, with the air of someone conferring a great secret. Erik smiles and shakes his head.

"I can only imagine. Does it get harder to keep yourself from mentally eavesdropping when you drink?"

"A bit," Charles says. "But I get fuzzier. And I don't understand as much of what I hear."

"Ah, but can you remember it later when you aren't as compromised?" Erik asks. Charles’s lips purse on the verge of a smile.

"Let's just keep that a professional secret," he says. Erik inclines his head in agreement, takes another sip of his drink. For what seems like the first time, Charles looks around, takes in the women dancing, the men staring with proprietary lust. If he didn't have several drinks under his belt, Erik guesses, he would be uncomfortable.

"Probably for the best that I don't spend much time in endeavours such as this," Charles says with a laugh. "You remember when we went to find Angel?"

"A few moments stand out in my mind," Erik notes drily.

"I mean, what if we'd gotten the wrong one?"

"It would mean you're a terrible telepath, for one."

"No, but what if it had been the wrong one and we'd have been stuck there getting a private striptease together?" Charles is giggling helplessly now, his face open and bright, so bright it almost hurts Erik to look at him.

"Poor striptease that makes you think of it as being stuck," Erik points out, and he can feel himself sliding, can feel the pendulum swinging away from the past.

"No, not stuck, but you know. Come on, you _know._ What would we have done?"

And in that instant, Erik's decision is made. It's probably not the smartest idea, for several reasons, but he feels reckless enough right now for the both of them. "Well," he says, standing up and reaching for his wallet. "Let's find out."

*****

She doesn't offer her name and Erik doesn't ask it, though he suspects Charles has already plucked it from the surface of her thoughts without even trying. Erik would guess she's barely more than twenty, if that, maybe a student at Barnard or Sarah Lawrence. She's unfazed when Erik tells her that he'll only be watching. Her surprise is a bit more visible when she reaches behind her back to unhook her top and Erik stops her with a word, saying they just want the dance, but she shrugs with a dancer's grace and says it's their call. Erik knows she sees him as an easy customer that she's happy to please, helped, no doubt, by the thick roll of bills he'd given her earlier, more than she probably makes in a week. Charles, on the other hand, seems to already have won her over. He bows low, pressing a kiss to the back of her hand.

"My lady," he says, then giggles at himself, the stupid drunken sot. Erik can't help laughing too. He settles into a chair in the corner with his drink, watching silently as she leads Charles to the chair against the other wall. It's a small room. She'd be within half a meter if he stretched out his foot. It's not as fancy as the room they'd seen Angel in, but Erik supposes you can't expect much from the only gentleman's club in Westchester County.

Music starts up, low and insistent. Erik can feel it behind his ears, in the pit of his stomach. His drink is cold in one hand, two fingers of the other resting on his temple in what he belatedly realizes must look like a mimicry of Charles's own habit. Charles glances at him, almost nervously. A gentle pressure skates at the periphery of Erik's mind, colored lights that swim away when he tries to focus on them. So different is this from any other time Charles has been in his mind – no strong voice, no careful excavation of memories – that Erik almost doesn't recognize it. It takes him a moment to understand that Charles is asking permission, giving Erik the option to shut him out. Trust leaves no room for denial. Immediately, Charles's presence curls like mist through Erik's mind, leaving him to wonder at this new sensation. It's some time before Erik even realizes that the girl has started her dance, that she's curving and folding on herself languidly in front of Charles as he watches her face.

She'd be beautiful to watch on her own, but Erik can't force himself to look at anything but Charles. He wonders how it seems from Charles's perspective, to experience something both as yourself and through another's eyes. Erik feels a quick pulse, then, a brief thought from Charles that somehow manages to convey the precise feeling of it. The girl's body sways, and the indescribable connectivity with Charles leaves Erik almost hypnotized, overwhelmed by everything.

The chair is well chosen for its purpose; there's enough room for her to straddle Charles, her knees alongside his thighs. She curls her hands around his ears, tilts his head back and practically smothers him with her breasts, and still the stupid bastard is looking into her eyes. How Charles has survived this long in the world the way he is, Erik doesn't know. She stands and turns then, watches him over her shoulder as she moves. Erik can feel a spark by proxy when she slides backwards on to his lap, arches back with her nape on his shoulder. Charles’s mouth is slightly open, now, his breathing visible in the rise and fall of his chest. He says something to make her laugh and they're already old pals, somehow, comrades in circumstantial arms.

"You're cute," she says. Smiles, tilts her head back. Says on little more than a breath, "You can touch if you want."

Charles's eyes flick immediately to Erik's. It feels undeniably like he's asking permission, or... No, Erik realizes, the presence of Charles's thoughts like tiny sparks firing in his brain, not permission. It's a request. He wants to know if Erik wants him to touch her, if Erik wants to _see_ him touch her. Heat floods Erik's abdomen instantly, "want" a ludicrously pale and inadequate word to describe what he's feeling right now, and he sees Charles's hands tighten on the arms of the chair in involuntary response, his fingertips puckering the leather with their pressure.

Charles looks back at the girl before he touches her – of course, Erik thinks wryly, he would never be so crass as to treat her like an object rather than a participant. Erik feels a throb of something besides the already present heat of desire, a constriction beneath his ribs. Oh Charles, he thinks. Wonderful, impossible Charles. Her waist nips in sharply over her hips, and Charles rests his hand there, gentle but firm on the flare of her hip, as it had been a moment ago on the arm of the chair. Erik has to lower his own hand, to grip the arm of his own chair to exert some control over his increasingly unruly body. The girl watches him do it and smiles, ducking her nose against Charles's ear to murmur something. He laughs and his eyes flick over to Erik's again, pinning him under their impossibly kind regard.

"Yes, I think he does too," he says, the rumble of his voice going straight to Erik's groin, and Erik can somehow hear an echo of the girl saying, "I think he likes it," though he couldn't say if it had come from his own intuition, with a nudge from Charles, or some combination of both.

She starts to move again, her hips sliding back against Charles's lap. Now that she's facing away from him, Charles has his eyes fixed on Erik. He smoothly, deliberately slides his hand over her stomach, fingers spread in a five-pointed star across her skin. Then his hand dips lower, ghosting over the top of her panties. His middle and ring fingers dip under the waistband, drag the already low fabric even lower. Low enough to make her gasp and Erik cross his legs, painfully hard and barely able to catch his breath. There's a challenge in Charles's faint smile, in his cocked eyebrow. _God_. Erik's supposed to be the reckless one. Instead he's sitting here, mute and helpless and more turned on than he's ever been in his entire life.

The knock on the door is overly loud, and more than a bit unwelcome. She reacts to it like it's a starter's pistol, briskly standing and going through the routine motions of looking for her clothing before she remembers herself with a laugh.

"Thank you," she says to Charles. He catches her hand again, presses it to his forehead in a gesture that would almost be childish if it weren't so endearing.

"Believe me," he says. "The pleasure was all ours." Erik's pulse stutters at the way Charles says "ours," so casually and easily it's like they were never anything but a pair. Under his still almost-painful arousal, a kind of desperation blooms. If he'd known how unhinged all of this would make him, he would never have done it in a million years. Unaware of Erik's turmoil, the girl smiles at Charles, kisses him on the cheek before turning towards the door.

"Next time maybe it can be your turn," the girl – Carol, he hears ghosting in his mind from Charles, her name is Carol – says to Erik with a wink, her hand trailing across his chest and over his shoulder as she disappears through the doorway. Erik can't manage any response.

No one comes to kick them out of the room. Erik doesn't think he could stand anyway, even if someone did. Charles looks to be in much the same position. He slouches down low in the chair and they sit there in the dim light, breathing raggedly in a syncopated rhythm. Erik doesn't know what to make of how complicated this became. Charles is still a soft, gentle presence in his mind. There's no pressure, no expectation or insistence; instead he hovers at the edges of Erik's consciousness, soothing and wonderful. Accepting. Seductive. It would be so easy for Erik to abandon himself to this, to forget everything he's fought through, all that he's planned.

"Why did you jump in after me?" Erik asks abruptly, his voice harsh in the quiet of the room. He hadn’t known he was going to say it until he heard his own words. "That first day with Shaw. I could have killed you. We both could have drowned. Why did you do it?"

"What else could I have done?" Charles asks in return. "You needed me. Maybe I needed you as well." It's exactly the sort of answer Erik expected but it still shoots through him with a bone-deep pleasure as keen as pain. Erik knows that he could never be as brave as Charles was that day, so heedless of his own safety on behalf of another.

 _You can be,_ Charles says in Erik's mind. _You **are**._

No, Erik thinks. You want me to change, to be better than I am. You want the whole world to be better than it has ever been.

"I want you to know that you have a choice," Charles says aloud, his voice soft and urgent. "Erik, there is more than one way."

Erik knows that for a man like Charles, such a thing is probably true. But for a man like him... He says nothing. Defeat etches itself on Charles's face. He pushes to his feet and moves alongside Erik's chair. They stay that way for an excruciating moment, a tableau of resignation and impossible desires, until Charles finally pulls the glass from Erik's hand and drains it in a single swallow.

"I'll be in the car," he says. Then suddenly his warm presence is gone from Erik's mind, and if Erik had ever thought he was lonely before, he knows now that he'd barely scratched the surface.

*****

Erik holds Charles by the elbow as they make their way upstairs and to their bedrooms. It's probably unnecessary; only the softness of his expression and the way he waits until the last possible moment to snap his foot out to meet the floor as he walks give any sign that Charles might still be at all drunk. It occurs to Erik that the contact is for his sake more than it is for Charles, but he shakes that away.

"I think you can put yourself to bed," he says when they're standing in Charles's open doorway. Charles straightens and looks up at Erik, focusing so intently on his face that Erik has an almost overwhelming urge to hide.

"But who will put on my footie jammies?" Charles asks, his voice plaintive, his smile sad and resigned. The girl's perfume is layered in Charles's hair, his jacket, on his skin. Erik can smell it on him, spicy and sweet and somehow not incongruous.

"Time to start sleeping naked, my friend," Erik says, then regrets it instantly as he imagines Charles doing just that, imagines joining him, imagines never leaving. Even in the dim light, he can see Charles's eyes go dark and unfocused, responding to the thoughts that are so obviously blaring from Erik's mind, thoughts that might even be audible to the non-telepathic. There's a fist in Erik's gut, clenched tightly and crowding out everything else. Charles sways, whether from drink or from what his mind is hearing, Erik doesn't know. He curls a hand around Erik's belt, his knuckles pressing into Erik's stomach like a brand.

"Erik," Charles whispers, and his lips are parted, his face tilted up to Erik's, and he's close enough that Erik can feel his breath, can smell bourbon and even chocolate ice cream still, under the girl's perfume, and he can't, God, he just _can't_ , or he'll be lost to himself forever.

It's not quite the hardest thing he's ever had to do – taking that first excruciating step back, then another, telling Charles goodnight as gently as he can – but that's difficult to remember when Charles is looking at him that way. Charles, who has seen everything Erik is and hasn’t turned away. It seems that there's nothing Erik can do anymore that won't leave him with regrets.

*****

Seeing him again the next morning is fresh pain, new blood welling up from a scab. The only blessing is that there's much to distract them: people to direct, checklists to run through, new uniforms to don. Erik sees Charles struggling with his uniform, fumbling ineffectively with the fasteners. Charles looks up at his approach, somehow both formidable and vulnerable at once.

"Shouldn't have put your gloves on first," Erik says. It takes only a wave of his hand to make the clasps fasten simultaneously. He tugs off his own glove, checks each clasp and harness, pulls each strap snug by his own hand. Charles stands quietly, submitting to Erik's ministrations, perhaps sensing that this is all Erik will allow himself to give. When he's done, Charles raises his head and their eyes meet as equals.

"No turning back now," Charles says. It would break Erik's heart if he let it.

"No," Erik says.

"Erik," Charles says before he can turn away, and Erik can feel it again, that careful, questing presence in his mind like the night before. Salvation itself could not be more tempting. And the look on Charles's face when Erik focuses, finds the thoughts and pushes them away, just the way Charles told him he could – that split second of stricken anguish that fades almost instantly into sad acceptance – could not be more devastating.

"You're learning," Charles says, his voice deceptively mild. It's like an iceberg, that sentence, five million things unspoken and hidden for every word said aloud. Erik wants to explain, to apologize, to beg Charles to understand that if he gives in, he's lost, that everything he's fought for will fall away into nothing.

But all he says is, "Yes."


End file.
